Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
He opened the hand douser.
Watching the screen through the observation port, he mused over ways in which he might fill the place with the pungent aroma of freshly made popcorn.
Robideau’s cell phone rang the next evening, just as he was leaving the house. It was Butts. Juggling a travel mug filled with afterdinner coffee, phone, and car keys, he took the call as he got into his car.
After relating his progress thus far to Butts, he deliberately turned the tables. “How about you? Have you found the girl?”
“Sherlock bloody Holmes couldn’t find that girl. Not with what I got to go on. It’s like she fell off the face of the earth. And now I got more trouble.”
“What’s that?”
“Now the private detective’s gone and disappeared too.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Do I sound like a kidder? I don’t know what to think about him. Maybe he got fed up. As far as the girl’s concerned, I had Claudia Webb print off some posters, and I been slapping ‘em up all over town.” He began reading one of them over the phone.
Robideau pulled out onto the street and headed downtown, only half listening. Then something the chief was blathering about caught his attention. “What did you just say?”
“I said the girl had a backpack. Why?”
“Can you describe it?”
“I guess so. Let’s see. Army surplus. There’s an Alfred Hitchcock patch sewn onto it — that famous drawing, his face in profile. She was an old movie buff apparently.”
Robideau fought to recall why that should mean something to him. Then he remembered the photos, the snaps Pete had taken at the Onager house, and an unpleasant feeling began to build in his gut.
“What have you got?” Butts demanded. “You on to something?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you.”
Robideau pulled a U-turn, tires chirping, and sped back to his house.
“You already looked at those pictures,” Mrs. Robideau chided him. “You know what they show.” She hovered in the office doorway.
“I think I know what they show,” Robideau answered, “but I just... yes. Here.”
His big hand hung over the mouse button. The picture showed, in digital detail, a cluttered corner of Bulwer Onager’s kitchen. And there at the end of the counter, on top of the milk cartons, on top of the Christmas cards, on top of the stack of out-of-date calendars, open jam jars, and a spray of knitting needles, was a backpack. But the backpack was blue with a Nike logo on it. Definitely not army surplus.
He sat there. He had been so sure...
He slowly searched back through the photos in reverse. The last one to appear was the practice shot Pete had snapped through the windshield of the car. There was a glare across it, the sun striking in across the dash. Behind the glare, and a little washed out by it, was the back of Oddlot’s van.
His eyes narrowed. In the rear window of the van was a backpack. It was desert camo. And he could see what looked like an oversized patch of old Hitch staring at something off-screen.
Robideau stood up. “Oh my God!”
Leaning hard on the accelerator, he made it to Oddlot’s mini-home in minutes. He pounded the steering wheel. The yard was empty. There was no sign of Oddlot’s van around.
“You lookin’ for somebody?” a voice asked. He turned and found Pete Melynchuk’s sardonic face watching him curiously from the street.
The Palace Roxy’s façade extended for one hundred feet along the east side of Burton Street, part of the usual small town brick and mortar continuum of shop fronts. The marquee, which had once blazed with hundreds of tiny incandescent lights, drooped sadly over their heads, dead for years.
“So you figure Oddlot grabbed the girl, do you?”
“No. I’m saying her backpack was in his van.”
Pete raised and lowered his eyebrows. He drew some picks out of his jacket pocket and went to work on the door.
“You’re not supposed to know how to do that,” Robideau observed.
“Good thing I know what I’m not supposed to know, then, isn’t it?”
Pete pulled the door open.
There was the old familiar lobby, the concession stand, the chrome-plated stanchions with the velvet rope drooping between them. The velvet rope was now two-toned: red along the bottom and gray on the top with dust. Ramps at each end of the room led to the auditorium.
“Whasamatter?” Pete asked.
Robideau was caught in a sudden rush of nostalgia. He had watched his first low-budget screen-screamer here: Creature From the Black Lagoon. It had astonished him. Delighted him. He’d loved it so darn much he’d hurried back for Tarantula, Monolith Monsters, and The Deadly Mantis, in that order.
“Did you ever see The Deadly Mantis?” Robideau asked.
“I seen Wilmer’s first wife, does that count?”
“And The Mysterians.” Robideau’s eyes misted over. “I still remember that pointy-nosed robot kicking a jeep out of its way. Pretty silly. But we loved it.”
“I seen that Phantom of the Opera movie here,” Pete said. “The old silent version. Guy with a face like a boiled sheep’s stomach and fingernails down to his knees. Coulda been Howard Hughes. They wouldn’t have needed makeup.” He stopped and glanced around uneasily. “Hope to hell we don’t find nothing like that lurching around in here.”
Framed posters still hung in the lobby. Probably valued by collectors, Robideau thought to himself. One of Janet Leigh in her underwear. And one of Hitch himself dressed in suit and tie, pointing at his watch, with the caption: NO ONE... BUT NO ONE... WILL BE ADMITTED TO THE THEATER AFTER THE START OF EACH PERFORMANCE. And another: DOn’t GIVE AWAY THE ENDING — It’s THE ONLY ONE WE HAVE.
Robideau pulled himself out of his reverie. He was here on business. He had come to find Oddlot Jenkins and ask him some tough questions. He followed Pete into the auditorium.
The room was in darkness. Pete switched on the large nine-volt lantern they had brought from Robideau’s car.
Robideau felt the back of his neck prickle. The Palace had never been luxurious — not a “picture palace.” This was a small town, after all. But it had once boasted a certain grandiosity with its plush-carpeted aisles, Art Deco sconces, pilasters, and not one but two glittering chandeliers, presumably to give the projectors an unobstructed line of shot. Now the chandeliers were clotted with spiderwebs, and dust hung in mats from the sconces.
Pete swept his light out over the seats. Nearly every one was heaped with something: books, paintings, an old typewriter, a large clock, a large number of mounted birds, rolls of carpet, a heap of hard hats, stuffed animals, a huge globe of the moon, boxes of ceramic tile. It was as if a convoy of bulging Salvation Army vans had off-loaded their contents into the place.
“What I think Bullet must’ve done,” Pete said, holding the lantern in his two hands and beaming it around, “is brought stuff from those other Onager businesses when they closed and stashed it here. Wouldn’t get rid of it. And over the years he’s kept on adding things.”
“It looks that way.”
“The guy’s a psycho.”
Heavy industrial furnishings crowded the proscenium. Display cases from the old Onager Department Store, complete with shelving and original merchandise. Stacks of men’s shirts behind the dusty glass. And manikins. There were manikins everywhere.
“I don’t see Oddlot around,” Pete said, stating the obvious.
“No, but someone’s been here.”
“Yeah?”
“Take a look at the floor.”
Pete aimed the light at their feet. There were plenty of footprints in the grime. Trails led off everywhere. Pete planted his own boot down deliberately, and a little mushroom cloud of dust billowed up. “I see what you mean.”